The present invention generally relates to edition of image information and a moving image editing apparatus for editing the same. More particularly, the present invention is concerned with a television program image editing system employed for production of video program or programs and the like.
In recent years, a television program creating/editing system has been developed by integrating consolidatedly the computer graphics (hereinafter termed CG in short) animation technology, voice synthesis technology, moving image regeneration technology and so for making possible the production of video programs such as television programs thoroughly with the aid of a computer.
Typical ones of the image data editing systems for enabling production of television programs through interaction between a user or operator and a computer are disclosed in Ueda et al""s xe2x80x9cDESK TOP TV PROGRAM CREATION-TVML (TV PROGRAM MAKING LANGUAGE) EDITOR-xe2x80x9d, Association for Computing Machinery, September 1998, Toshiaki Yokoyama et al""s xe2x80x9cPROGRAM-GENERATION/ INTERACTIVE EDITING SYSTEM BASED ON TELEVISION PROGRAM MAKING LANGUAGE-TVMLxe2x80x9d, Third Intelligence Information Media Symposium, December 1997, and Toshiaki Yokoyama et al""s xe2x80x9cMAN-MACHINE INTERFACE FOR TV PROGRAM MAKING LANGUAGE (TVML)xe2x80x9d, Society Convention of The Institute of Electronics and Communication Engineers of Japan, September 1997.
With the TVML editing systems or TVML editors disclosed in the literatures mentioned above, it is possible to create or produce programs such as TV or video programs developed on a so-called virtual studio, i.e., computer graphics studio or CG studio, with the aid of a computer and a display screen apparatus connected to the system without using a real studio and real characters on the basis of information concerning the animation characters and the CG studio set stored in a RAM of large capacity such as a hard disk device by using voice synthesizing tools, animation creating tools and others.
Images of a program being edited or created can be displayed on the display screen of the TVML editor. However, the images which can be displayed are limited only to those taken in a predetermined photographing or pick-up direction, i.e., those images viewed only from a view point of camera-disposed in a virtual studio. In this conjunction, it is noted that in the course of creation of images for a video program and the edition thereof, there often arises the necessity of confirming the images of the program being created from other different view point(s) (photographing direction(s) and position(s)) of an additional camera(s) in order to move the CG characters making appearance in the program with high accuracy and/or to realize matching of speeches of the characters accurately with the motions or actions thereof. For changing the photographing direction or the camera position in the virtual studio, the editor or operator is forced to perform input operations for changing predetermined value of the view point of the camera (hereinafter also referred to as the camera""s view point) upon every changing of the photographing direction and the camera position to thereby change correspondingly the photographing direction of the image to be displayed. As the images viewed from the different camera view points, there may be mentioned, by way of example, images viewed from directly overhead in the CG studio, close-up images of mouth portions of the characters, images located outside of the frame of the image being edited and so forth. After confirmation of the motion or action of the character by displaying these particular images viewed from the different view points as described above, the editing of the image taken from the original camera view point is resumed and continues. Obviously, the above-mentioned procedure is very troublesome to the editor with a remarkable burden being imposed on him or her. Besides, the editing work takes a long time. In this conjunction, it is also noted that the images viewed from the particular view points such as mentioned above are scarcely used in practical program creation. In this case, the work of checking the images of the special view-point cameras described above will ultimately result in fruitless effort.
In the light of the state of the art described above, it is an object of the present invention to provide a video program editing method and a computer program product for displaying a video program as edited which are imparted with such capability or facility that in the course of creating a program or edition of images, image(s) viewed from other view point(s) desired by operator and differing from the camera view point of the image being displayed can instantaneously be displayed and which thus allow creation of the program such as TV or video program as well as edition-relevant works to be carried out in a much simplified and facilitated manner within a significantly reduced time.
In view of the above and other objects which will become apparent as the description proceeds, it is taught according to the present invention that the image of the editor""s camera view point and the images(s) viewed from view points set as described previously (hereinafter also referred to as the user""s view point) are defined to thereby set the data concerning these view points are set up. The camera view point represents the view point of reproduced image of a video program being edited as in the case of the conventional TVML editor or the view point of an image picked up and broadcasted. On the other hand, with the user""s view point, it is intended to mean the view points only for the edition which intrinsically differ from the camera view point. According to an aspect of the present invention, such arrangement is provided that the camera view point and the user""s view point(s) can mutually be changed over in the course of displaying and editing a video program through manipulation of the information which can be displayed on the editing screen.
In a preferred mode for carrying out the present invention, data concerning the coordinates and the directions of the camera view point and the user""s view point(s) in a three-dimensional coordinate system pertinent to a CG studio are prepared or set up. The preset direction concerning any given user""s view point can be altered or modified by the editor (operator). Further, the user""s view point can be moved in accompanying motion or action of the character making appearance on the CG studio. When the editing work is carried out with monitoring the image of the user""s view point the results of the edition are automatically reflected in the image of the camera view point.
Thus, according to an aspect of the present invention, there is provided a method of editing a video program including computer graphics animation, wherein the method comprises the steps of setting a camera view point as a view point of images of the video program broadcasted and a user""s view point for editing images picked up from the camera view point, the user""s view point being different from the camera view point, storing the images picked up from the camera view point and user""s view point, respectively, in a storage unit, reading out the images of the camera view point from the storage unit and displaying the images thereof on a screen of a display unit, reading out the images of the user""s view point from the storage unit and displaying the images thereof on the screen of the display unit, and editing the images picked up by the camera view point in accordance with the images picked up from the user""s view point.
Further, according to a second aspect of the present invention, there is provided a computer program product comprising a computer usable medium having computer-readable program code means embodied therein for displaying images for editing a video program including computer graphics animation, comprising the steps of; wherein said computer-readable program code means includes;
means for setting a camera view point as a view point of images of said video program broadcasted and a user""s view point for editing images picked up from said camera view point, said user""s view point being different from said camera view point;
means for storing said images picked up from said camera view point and user""s view point, respectively, in a storage unit;
means for reading out said images of said camera view point from said storage unit and displaying said images thereof on a screen of a display unit;
means for reading out said images of said user""s view point from said storage unit and displaying said images thereof on the screen of said display unit; and
means for editing said images picked up by said images picked up by said user""s view point.